查看文章

Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is effective in reducing clinical events in systolic heart failure patients with a wide QRS. Previous retrospective studies suggest only patients with QRS prolongation due to a left bundle-branch block (LBBB) benefit from CRT. Our objective was to examine this by performing a meta-analysis of all randomized controlled trials of CRT.

Systematic searches of MEDLINE and the Food and Drug Administration official website were conducted for randomized controlled CRT trials. Trials reporting adverse clinical events (eg, all-cause mortality, heart failure hospitalizations) according to QRS morphology were included in the meta-analysis.

Four randomized trials totaling 5,356 patients met the inclusion criteria. In patients with LBBB at baseline, there was a highly significant reduction in composite adverse clinical events with CRT (RR = 0.64 [95 …